Influence Of Humor Type On Individiual And Collaborative Creative Thinking

At present,a lot of efforts and attempts have been made in the aspect of the relationship between humor and creativity.Researchers generally focus on the effects of sense of humor,humor expression,humor endorser,and wit on creative potential or creative thinking.However,it is still controversial whether humor can promote creativity.This may be attributed to the adoption of the whole concept of humor.Trying to divide humor into different types and examine the effects of different humor types on individual and collaborative creativity can be helpful to solve this dispute.Therefore,the present research focuses on the effects of different types of humor(non-self-involvement:affiliative,aggressive;self-involvement:self-enhancing,self-defeating)on individual and collaborative creativity.The mechanism of the influence of different types of humor on creativity was also explored.To investigate the impact of humor types on individual and collaborative creative thinking,a total of two studies,including six experiments,were conducted.Study 1(Expermentla,Experimentlb,Experimentlc,and Experimentld)used the one-way between-subject experimental design,and study2(experiment2a,experiment2b)adopted a 3x3 factorial designed.In Study 1,the results showed that:(1)non-self-involvement humor(aggressive and affiliative)had a positive effect on individual creative thinking(both in convergent and divergent thinking);(2)for self-involvement humor,only the self-enhancing humor promotes convergent thinking and divergent thinking(originality,fluency,and flexibility);(3)The effect of non-self-involvement humor on convergent thinking and the effect of self-involvement humor on divergent thinking(fluency and elaboration)moderated by cognitive flexibility.(4)positive-high-activation(secure,trust,happy,and elated)and positive-low-activation(calm,relaxed,warm,and lively)emotion both mediated the effect of non-self-involvement humor on convergent thinking,and positive-low-activation(secure,trust,happy,elated)emotion mediated the effect of non-self-involvement humor on divergent thinking(elaboration).In addition,positive-low-activation-prevention-focus(calm,relaxed)mediated the effect of self-involvement humor on originality.The positive valence emotion(calm,relaxed,warm,lively,secure,trusting,happy,and elated)mediated the effect of self-involvement humor on the elaboration component of divergent thinking as well.In Study 2,we investigated whether the effects of different types of humor(non-self-involved and self-involved)on collaborative creativity were affected by gender dyads(male-male,male-female,and female-female).The results have shown that:(1)non-self-involvement(affiliative and aggressive)humor and self-involvement(self-enhancing and self-defeating)humor both promoted collaborative convergent and divergent thinking;(2)the gender dyad had an effect on collaborative convergent and divergent thinking(originality and elaboration)in self-involvement humor,and the gender dyad had an effect on divergent collaborative thinking(fluency and flexibility)in non-self-involvement humor;(3)there were interaction effects of humor types(non-self-involvement and self-involvement)and gender dyads on convergent and divergent collaborative thinking(originality).From our findings,it can be concluded that all types of humor can promote individual creative thinking(either convergent or divergent)except for self-defeating humor.On the other side,self-defeating humor can also boost divergent creative thinking when collaboration happens.Thus,if we want to increase collaborative creativity,we can use any sort of humor,but when we want to boost individual creativity,we should care about using self-defeating humor.The effects of different types of humor on individual creative thinking were moderated by cognitive flexibility and mediated by emotion,respectively.Besides,like individual creativity,collaborative creativity was induced by all types of humor,and gender dyads affected collaborative divergent and convergent thinking.In practice,when authority needs to solve a specific problem,to get better performance,they must include a male-male team,but when authority needs new ideas to produce a new product,they must include the female-female team to get better performance by using self-enhancing humor.On the other hand,if they want to use aggressive humor to solve a specific problem to get better performance,they may include a male-male team or a male-female team.